If you look on the
map I have attached with this entry, you will find a section marked with a
glowing golden color. That is for one reason and one reason alone as you can
tell by its label: BEER.
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| Just look for the gold coloring and you will see it.... |
This 24x12x12 refrigerated
cooler is fiercely guarded with its contents inventoried daily and checked
daily to maintain a perfect 33-degrees. It is not guarded for fear of people
stealing the contents. It is guarded to make sure that we have enough to
last!!! Jeez, are we alcoholics or what?
In truth, I don’t
blame a lot of the people for wanting to knock back a cold one every once in a
while. Because of Oklahoma liquor laws, grocery stores can only carry 3.2 beer
and no liquor of any kind. So I think it might be obvious (for someone that
lives out of state) why the crew was pretty intent on sacking that liquor store
that is on the south end of the parking lot next to the convenience store.
We carry all the
mixes and such to make well drinks here in the store but just not the liquor.
So the crew took every opportunity when the coast was clear to skulk over to
the liquor store with shopping carts while our snipers covered them from the
roof. Some people were pretty particular: “I want this kind of liquor.” “Get
every bottle of this brand that they have.” “And I want this kind of imported
beer!”
Look, I don’t want to
paint us as an entire group of lushes over here. Fred has still not touched a
drop. I think Alex snuck a beer during the Fourth of July. I have never really
been a big drinker myself. Even when things were falling apart for me way back
when, one friend told me that my biggest problem was that I wasn’t drunk enough
during that darkness.
But I see why we need
it. I do. Long before all this, Kasondra talked about members in her military
unit with the National Guard. Active duty guys are under so much stress all the
time when they are operating, they want to be able to just relax and let loose.
Well, nothing – and I mean nothing – is more stressful than looking out on a
bunch of undead cannibals mulling about the parking lot waiting to devour you.
During all of our
sortie runs outside, the mentality was “Is this worth dying for.”
We have all been in
those stressful situations where you say, “I cannot take one more day of this!”
I think we were all there with the sleeping situation. The propane run
guarantees us with electrical power. The spring/early summer clothes we were
all wearing during Zero Hour were not going to cut in February. And the run
that Fred made that cost him his life outfitted us with more bullets than we
know what to do with.
Looking back on the
liquor store raid, I can say now that no one was hurt. We didn’t lose anyone.
And we stockpiled things that will make life a little more tolerable down the
road when it is too cold to go outside or when things look bleak. We didn’t
need it to live… but, damn, that cooler sure does help.
